Latin Roots - Aaron Levinson on Samba

Grammy award-winning Latin music producer and music industry veteran Aaron Levinson joins WXPN’s David Dye for this seventeenth segment of the Latin Roots music series. Levinson is a Philadelphia native and started his music career at Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. He has a background as a musician and composer and is an ASCAP-affiliated songwriter/ publisher and former governor of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

He has gone on to start his own record label, Range Recording Studios, in Ardmore, PA and has produced/ released a total of 16 albums throughout his career. Levinson also co-composed and produced the score for the Cinemax documentary “How Do You Spell Murder?” by Oscar-winning directors Alan and Susan Raymond. This installment of the Latin Roots music series focuses on samba music and Levinson explains the history and traditions behind samba in Latin America. Levinson explains how Samba started in a favela called Estacio in the 1930s and is the national music of Brazilian culture and embraces the country's Afro-Brazilian history. He says that, although samba comes from much older, West African form, it was still designed for a mass audience because it was played on the radio. Levinson plays a selection of samba music, such as “O Telefone Tocou Novamente” by Jorge Ben, which is a cover of the original samba song and in it, you can hear an American soul music influence.